Shortcakes

We had some friends over the other night, and I made shortcakes, which we had with berries and ice cream and whip cream. Yum! I've made quite a few shortcake recipes over the years, and these were the best I've had. Very sweet and flaky. The recipe I used was one from Epicurious, which can be found here. I'll reproduce it for ease of use.

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter

1/2 cup milk

1 large egg

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400F. Line a big baking sheet with parchment paper (which keeps the bottoms from getting too crunchy).

Combine the dry ingredients in a big bowl and stir to blend. Cut the butter into 1/2 inch pieces and sprinkle it into the flour, then mix it a bit so the butter gets coated. Now, work the butter into the flour with your fingers. You basically want to pick up the butter pieces and mash them up. (There are other ways to cut butter into flour, too, but that one seems to work best for this recipe.) Keep doing this until the flour looks like a coarse meal. 

Whisk the egg into the milk, and pour that into the flour mixture. Stir until a dough forms, then turn it out onto a floured work surface and knead it just a bit (maybe 6-8 turns) until its smooth. 

Finally, make eight shortcakes, however you like. You can flatten the dough and cut circles with a glass, or cut triangles with a knife, or divide the dough into eight pieces and shape the shortcakes that way.

Put the shortcakes on the baking sheet. Leave a bit of room between them, as they will rise a bit. Bake them for about 12 minutes, until a tester comes out dry.